TOKYO - The ferocious train explosion
in North Korea last week, the request for aid and the
outpouring of international assistance has prompted
speculation that just maybe the Hermit Kingdom will
humanize a bit, open up a bit, recognize that it needs
the outside world and cooperate in forthcoming
working-level talks on defusing the Pyongang nuclear
crisis.

The first six-party working-level talks
on defusing the North Korean nuclear crisis will be held
May 12 in Beijing in advance of a formal session yet to
be scheduled this summer. Is there a rail link between
Thursday's announcement of the talks and last week's
devastating train explosion in North Korea, accompanied
by an outpouring of international aid? Probably not.

Informed observers say the explosion, the
details of which are still not known, will have little
or no bearing on the first working-level talks scheduled
in advance of formal six-party talks expected, but not
yet scheduled for this summer. The parties are North
Korea and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the
United States, all but Pyongyang trying to put a
permanent end to North Korea's nuclear programs in
return for cheap energy, security guarantees and
economic assistance.

The reasons are twofold:
One, Pyongyang's response to the disaster hasn't
revealed any change in North Korea's hostile attitudes
toward the international community. Two, the United
States is far more concerned with Iraq and the fighting
in Fallujah than with North Korea - and it doesn't score
points with voters by accommodating Pyongyang in any
way.

"Despite the setup of the working group
meeting on May 12, unfortunately the [US President
George W] Bush administration is tied up with Iraqi
issues, especially about [fighting insurgents in]
Fallujah," said Douglas Ramsey, a consultancy manager
with Jane's Information Group, affiliated with Jane's
Defense Weekly. Ramsey is a commentator on security and
defense issues, including Asia.

"The North's
nuclear issue has become the back-burner issue at the
Bush administration," Ramsey said in an interview with
Asia Times Online. "Six-party talks will see no
progress, unless some event drives it. Event-driven. But
the train explosion is not big enough to drive it," said
Ramsey, who is visiting Tokyo.

The impasse is
likely to continue, but so will talks, at least that
much is clear from Kim Jong-il's train trip to Beijing
to meet Chinese leaders. He passed through the Ryongchon
train station just eight or nine hours before it was
flattened by an explosion last weekend. More than 160
people were killed, about half of them children; 1,300
were injured and more than 8,100 homes and 30 public
buildings were destroyed, including an elementary
school. Key manufacturing and industrial infrastructure,
important to the failing economy, also were destroyed or
damaged.

It's tempting to think that North
Korea, which had refused international assistance in the
past in disasters and famine, was revealing a new spirit
of openness this time. Pyongyang, however, has been
highly selective, refusing doctors, medicine, medical
equipment, food, water and reconstruction teams from
South Korea. It rejected the swift transport of supplies
from south to north by road. This is the same old
Pyongyang, observers say, that allows its people to
suffer, and instead, requests color television sets,
concrete and diesel fuel from the international
community. The official Korean Central News Agency
(KCNA) reports that stricken victims rushed back into
burning buildings in order to "rescue" portraits of the
"Dear Leader", Kim Jong-il. That speaks volumes about
rigid ideology but says little about a new attitude in
Pyongyang toward the international community.

So, this time again it is thinking about its
regime's well-being first, before that of
treatment-needy children. "Color televisions are not
[the] answer for those children," said Ramsey. This type
of request speaks volumes about the regime and its lack
of sensibilities to the international perception," he
said.

A week after the scourge of the massive
rail explosion near the Chinese border, details of its
damage are trickling out from the Hermit Kingdom. The
Stalinist nation took the unusual step - for Pyongyang -
of officially announcing the domestic catastrophe and
welcoming aid workers to the site just two days after
the explosion. Even in the "great famine" of the 1990s,
in which millions of people died of starvation, North
Korea did not seek aid from the international community.
This also speaks volumes about the gravity of the
explosion.

North Korea has refused any sort of
external influence since its birth at the conclusion of
World War II and has always avoided showing any
weakening of internal control. It never wants to open
the door because that would admit too many unwanted
influences and the regime might come apart.

What really blew up?Was it a nitrate
explosion or a propane explosion? Details of the cause
of the accident are still unknown, but eventually this
too will trickle out in coming weeks and reveal a lot
about North Korea's current energy and cash situation.
Early reports said it was caused by the crash of two
trains, one carrying fuel oil and the other liquefied
petroleum gas (LPG), or some sort of chemicals, during
the shunting of cargo. But later on, KCNA said two rail
wagons, believed to be loaded with ammonium nitrate used
for fertilizer, blew up during a shunting operation with
fuel oil wagons. The information has been complicated
and confusing at best.

"We are not sure about
the cause," John Sparrow, the Red Cross' representative
in Beijing, said in a telephone interview on Thursday
with Asia Times Online. "There are many versions of what
happened. In the first stage, some even said it [was]
caused by dynamite."

Photographs and video
footage from the site apparently showed the explosion of
some combustible products. The explosion scattered
debris over two kilometers of damage radius and left
children injured by a wave of glass, rubble and blasts
of hot air.

The Customs General Administration
of China has been presenting intriguing and puzzling
data to oil market players in Asia, possibly relating to
the tragedy. Surprisingly, in light of its own chronic
energy shortages, North Korea recently has been
exporting LPG, commonly known as propane, to China. For
example, the latest data showed it exported to China
1,225 tonnes of propane in January, and 608 tonnes last
November, while Japan only exported to China 814 tonnes
and 3 tonnes during the same respective periods.

China is also suffering an energy shortage and
needs more fuel for its super-heated economy. Does it
aim to bolster Pyongyang's desperately weak economy by
providing hard currency for the gas? Or is it just to
give North Korea some "carrots" in order to win some
political compromise in the stalled six-party talks?

The explosion occurred very close to the North
Korean border with China. Traded propane could well be
related to the blast. Even if propane was not the cause,
the world might want to know how many tons of ammonium
nitrate, which Pyongyang cited as the combustible
material, exploded, because this also has a bearing on
the North's cash and energy situations.

Some
medical aid workers saw parallels between the fiery
train blast and the 1986 nuclear disaster in Chernobyl,
Ukraine, that pushed the old Soviet Union to reform and
finally collapse. But North Korea still represents the
regime and personality cult built on mistrust of all
outsiders since its inception, and this tragedy clearly
will not nudge the Hermit Kingdom out of isolation.

Ramsey, the Jane's commentator, said that the
huge amount of aid from the international community,
including those in the six-party talks, will not induce
North Korea to give up its nuclear program and what
experts believe to be several weapons. North Koreans, he
pointed out, always have extended their hands for
assistance and given nothing in return. So far, there's
no reason to change.